Have you ever seen someone park their car in reverse in a parking lot? Have you noticed them taking up to 3 minutes, literally, to fix their car into that parking space in backward mode? They can easily pull into the spot right away, but they choose to go forward, and then reverse and then move forward again to fit the rear of their cars inside first.

To all the drivers who love to do that and swear by it, if it’s your own parking unit, then go ahead, park in any manner. However, if it’s a public parking lot and you are blocking all the traffic because you decide to like you are on ecstasy, then you need to buy a dump truck to justify your parking style. Such a parking style is necessary when you have a pregnant wife [or are pregnant] and wish to run to the hospital quickly without backing out, or you are robbing a store and want to have a quick getaway, or as I said before, if it’s your own reserved parking area at your office or at your home. If you are really good at it and can do it quickly and without wasting any time, then by all means do it anywhere. However, you always waste time. You think it’s the same as parallel parking; it’s not. Pick up your driving test booklet and read it again. You don’t know how to park in reverse.

Did you park that way in the “DMV TEST ONLY PARKING” spot when you went to take your first DMV test? You are not in Europe. Your car isn’t tiny. You aren’t that good of a driver. Trying to do this style of parking at a shopping mall parking lot by blocking more than 5 cars for more than 5 minutes, in the blistering heat, while everyone sees that you don’t know how to park, isn’t nice, not because you yourself appear as being stupid [people stop caring once they notice your unique parking style], but because they could have taken that very spot in less than 5 seconds [yes, count that, less than 5 seconds, the amount of time it takes to pull into an open spot and stop the car]. You rush through a university parking lot, breaking every law possible and trying your best to run over pedestrians to get to your class early, and when you do find a spot to park into, you start your “my cars rear end goes in first” game, wasting several minutes right there and blocking others. What’s worse; the spot you are reverse-parking into is diagonal, at an angle, requiring several efforts by you just to align your car into a diagonal line.

Next time you want to park like that, check to see if you are parking a garbage truck. If you aren’t, then check to see if you would be blocking anyone else while you try out a form of parking that’s normal for people in normal conditions but you would like to make it into a stunt. If you are blocking people, then just park normally.